


Make it Holy, Make it Fine

by absofruitlynot



Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, soft smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-22
Updated: 2018-08-22
Packaged: 2019-06-30 23:38:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15762084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/absofruitlynot/pseuds/absofruitlynot
Summary: It’s late but it’s before midnight, and they’re in her kitchen, and he is allowing her to make much more of a fuss over a scrape on his forehead than it certainly deserves.





	Make it Holy, Make it Fine

**Author's Note:**

> I would read one million different iterations of this scenario, and now I have written one

It’s late but it’s before midnight, and they’re in her kitchen, and he is allowing her to make much more of a fuss over a scrape on his forehead than it certainly deserves. Only a few lamps in the apartment are on, and their light and that from the streetlights (and that from just below her skin) is bathing them in a soft, muted glow as she works in silence, fingers tracing the ridges of his temple with impossible care. He’s leaning back against her counter and she’s leaning just a little too close (but not close enough)—it’s as close as they ever allow themselves to get.

She’s standing just near enough that she’s almost between his knees, and although she’s avoiding his gaze her slight blush shows that she’s aware of his eyes following her. His heart is beating remarkably slowly, somehow managing not to betray him even as his skin prickles with every touch.

She finishes her vague ministrations and reaches around him to set the washcloth down on the countertop.

“You’ll survive,” she confirms, but the joke catches slightly in her throat when their gazes meet again.

The pull between them is suddenly too much and his hand reaches out, almost of its own accord, to rest against the soft flesh slightly above her hip. The pads of his fingers press hesitantly but tenderly, tracing slightly through the fabric of her blouse, and she responds with a hand on his wrist and the other on his forearm.

It is inevitable now; they ache for it but they buy themselves some time, leaning their foreheads together in the only form of intimacy they’d been able to bear up until now. They stay there, breathing, like that shattering day in the elevator-- but nothing like that, at all.

He is the first to move.

He drags his nose down, across her cheekbone to her jaw, and kisses her just under that sharp angle, full and open-mouthed.

It’s either a coward’s move or the boldest thing he’s ever done—miles from her lips but heavy with intent, and the shaky breath she pulls in is all the affirmation he needs. He places another kiss along her jawline, then one on the corner of her lips; he senses her spine stretching towards him and her fingers pressing into the muscles of his forearm, and their lips finally find each other and it begins in earnest.

It’s soft and languid at first, their lips dragging, getting used to the feel of each other. His hands circle her waist, around to the small of her back and tugging gently at her blouse, and hers slide up his arms to spread around his neck. They continue like this for several long, honeyed moments, using the last of their patience as the anticipation builds in their veins.

She bites his bottom lip and he pulls back slightly, unable to stop a breathless chuckle; she looks at him and wonders how the world’s hardest man could have the softest eyes she’d _ever seen_ and she cannot bear waiting any longer, so she kisses him and rocks her hips against his and the energy between them ignites.

\-------

All of the hesitancy and the patience is gone and replaced with utter delight and the thrill of someone you’ve been aching for, and they stumble towards her bedroom, smiling against each other’s lips and threading their hands through the other’s hair.

They stop just inside her door; or rather, he stops them, unable to resist pushing her against the wall and grinding his hips against hers in retaliation. Her hands slide under his soft, dark t-shirt, roaming momentarily over his hard stomach before finding purchase on his obliques and pulling him against her to stay. It’s joyful and _filthy_ and they are reveling in it; he’s hard against her and their kisses are open-mouthed and indulgent.

He lands on the bed first, grinning up at her as they work together at the buttons of her blouse. She’s a little preoccupied by that grin even as his hands finally spread over her bare skin—she’s seen him smile before, obviously, but this absurd, twinkly thing is something else altogether. She dips down to kiss it, briefly, before tugging his shirt off and reaching for his belt. It continues like this—almost clumsy, a little desperate, until it’s just skin between them and his mouth closes over a nipple and she gasps and allows herself to be rolled onto her back.

His hands grip her waist as he kisses sporadically down her torso and past her bucking hips. He glances up at her and quirks his eyebrow at her in a look that is somehow both cocky and bashful, and utterly him. She thinks briefly of the headlines that crop up occaisionally— _Where is The Punisher Now?_ —and wonders if any of them had guessed that the answer was “holed up in a pretty nice apartment making some journalist’s toes curl with those ridiculous sinful lips”—but then the lips in question shift course slightly and all thought of who they are outside this room vanishes as something builds inside her that she hasn’t felt in ages.

“I want—” she starts, breathlessly, “I need—” and he understands, and crawls back up her body and kisses her before rolling off of her slightly and carding his hand through his hair.

“Do you have anything we could, uh…” he asks, winking, teasing quietly. 

She smiles, nods, and slides away from him, gets off the bed to open the drawer in her nightstand. “We have a few—” she glances back towards him, and all the breath leaves her body.

The sight of him is incomprehensibly erotic; lying on his back, naked, breathing deeply. He is like a damn classical painting, his body a story of pain, of strength, and now of lust, powerful and vulnerable all at once. His back arches off the bed a little as he stretches and she is caught by every subtle shift of muscle and joint under his worn skin, by the slow expansion of his rib cage, by the strange glow that has woven itself through his veins.

His own gaze had been dragging leisurely up her body as she stood taking him in, and now rises to meet hers, two pairs of heavy, soft eyes meeting in wonder and a little bit of disbelief.  

Something shifts.

She moves back towards him as he reaches for her; the giddy urgency of barely a moment before has faded and something steadier has washed over the room. Their naked bodies meet and twist together as they explore each other with renewed purpose. She kisses his scars; the deep ones on his forearm and shoulder, the grazes all over his torso, the ones she’d witnessed and those he’ll never explain.

His weight presses down on her and his face is buried in her neck, and when he finally enters her her back arches all the way off the bed and she makes a noise she’d never heard that comes from deep in her chest. Their eyes meet as he begins to really move.

Her fingers knead into the muscles of his shoulders, wanting to commit every inch of him, every second of this to memory. He pulls her up to his chest with a hand on the small of her back as he sits back onto his knees, allowing her a moment to wrap herself entirely around him and taking the opportunity to kiss her breathlessly. He reaches down in between them and strokes her as he rocks up into her; each lungful of air they take in is nowhere near enough as they climb together. She feels it rushing inside her, she is almost ready to let it take her—

He stops, suddenly, and she thinks her heart may have too; there’s a look in his eyes that is dark and beautiful and wild and she is spellbound even as she gasps in desperation. Either a second or a lifetime later, with one press of his deadly hand she is shattering around him and holding onto him as tightly as she can. He chases her, following her down as her back hits the bed once more, and he loves her, loves her, _loves her—_

_______

He wakes several hours later, and his first thought is that this is the most comfortable he has been in years. He’s wrapped around her, their legs tangled, his right hand still clutched in hers and held gently against her chest. His face is buried in her hair, and he takes a deep breath of her sweet, fresh, scent, combined with something saltier and headier that serves as a reminder of what they’d done earlier.

His second thought is that he is, perhaps, the thirstiest he has been since he left the desert.

Deeply reluctant to move, he considers ignoring it for a moment, considers staying there in her bed until he dies of thirst without regret. Of all the ways he’s had the opportunity to go out, this would certainly rank among the highest.

But sense prevails and he spends a few moments disentangling himself in the softest way he can manage, then locates and pulls on his previously discarded pants after he decides that he cannot _quite_ bring himself to wander around Karen Page’s apartment naked, and moves into her kitchen.

He stands looking out of the window as he drinks, looking past the pot of carefully tended white roses and into the city that has brought both of them so much heartbreak and chaos. His life had been a series of abrupt, extreme shifts, and her lunging at him in a hospital room is certainly one of the only good ones. As a rule, he tries not to think about where he would be if she hadn’t nosed her way into his life, but the answer is most likely not breathing and certainly not here, relaxed and content.

He hears floorboards creaking from the direction of her room, and after a moment he turns to see her emerging, clad only in a unbuttoned shirt that is far too big for her and looking as breathtaking as always.

“I could hear you thinking from all the way in there,” she admonishes gently. Her eyes are sleepy but there is a wink in them, and he smiles at her.

His smile widens when he sees that the shirt she’s wearing is one of his, and what’s more, it’s not the one she’d pulled off of him earlier—it’s a big, soft flannel he’d unintentionally left here a while back and hadn’t thought to retrieve. The rush of affection is so strong it makes him _blush_ and look down, back out of the window. It just—it makes sense, too much sense, to see her like this: intimate and moonlit and knowing.

He hears her footfalls approaching, but he still jumps a little when he feels her cool hands make contact with the bare skin of his waist. She wraps her arms around him and presses herself against his back, breathing him in. He wonders if she’s going to say something, but instead she dips her head forward and kisses his shoulder.

(She’s wondering, not for the first time, what it would be like to love someone who wasn’t more scar tissue than man, but she’s finding that she’s glad he is letting her.)

“This is good,” she murmurs. He leans his head to the side, pressing his temple against hers briefly, agreeing silently. They stand like this for a few minutes as he finishes his water, her forehead resting in the crook of his neck, until he sets the glass down and turns in her arms to face her. He traces the line of her collarbone with his thumb, nudging her shirt open just a little further.

“Well, Miss Page, are you gonna take me to bed?”

The soft look in those wide blue eyes turns just a shade wickeder, and she fights back a grin.

“Yeah.”

**Author's Note:**

> i just *clenches fist* love them


End file.
